Can anyone give me a idea of how much cocktails are on the ships, i plan to pay my gratuities before i leave. Is there anything else I need to take care of early. So I won't get a big surprise at the end of my crusie?

The dod's (drink of the days) are least expensive, they will be about $5 or so. The dod's will be listed in the capers which are now called the fun times, it's a paper with the day's activities. The regular drinks like margaritas, daiquiris and such are about $10 or more and the gratuity for the drink is included.

Our last Carnival cruise the DOD could be bought without the speciality glass and was 4.95 plus the tip. With the glass 7.95 plus.

Definitely buy the drinks of the house in regular glass and also walk up to the bar and make them produce drink from scratch and not from pre mixed which has very little booze. Sometimes they do not like to do but insist Have been on numerous Carnival cruises and this is from experience,

As soon as you get on board, look for a little stand set up where you can get a bottomless soda sticker put on your FunCard, especially if you like soda. My wife drinks soda like a fish, so that's the first thing we did after checking into our room, and it was well worth it.

I'd heard about this before, but neglected to do it right away on our second cruise together, and couldn't find anyone to sell me one; I just got the run-around, so I recommend you do it right away.

Another good idea is to pre-order food and drinks, via carnival.com to be waiting in your stateroom, unless you enjoy standing in line after standing in a long line to get onboard, and whatever else you were doing to get to the port.